On the heels of other successful union pushes in area hospitals, nurses and advanced practitioners at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital announced May 29 that they had overwhelmingly opted to hold a union election with a “substantial majority” of over 1,000 votes. The nurses add to the tally of successful organizing bids — as well as strike votes — at hospitals including Western Psychiatric Hospital by nurses affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
“We work for a health system that is an insurer and provider, and, as nurses, we experience the conflict between those roles day to day,” Magee Maternal Newborn Resource Team nurse Jean Stone told a crowd gathered in Zulema Parklet for the announcement. “For too long, the insurance arm of our health system has prioritized expansion and competition at the cost of our care and our practice.”
UPMC has faced a growing tide of public discontent following revelations of generous executive compensation paired with staff and service cutbacks and, more recently, denial of healthcare for trans patients. Stone and other Magee nurses said UPMC executives’ use of a private jet, Super Bowl commercials, and millions of dollars in pay to retired CEO Jeffrey Romoff stood in stark contrast to what they described in a release as “the worst nursing crisis in the entire nation.”
“I see nurses and practitioners hustling to do everything they can with every minute of their shift, and I see families not receiving the kind of personal and personalized education that we all want to give them before they leave with their newborn,” Stone said.
Magee is home to the largest Level IV neonatal intensive care unit in the commonwealth. The hospital sees some 10,000 births annually, or about half of the Allegheny County total. Multiple speakers said they had given birth to their own children at the hospital and spoke of their pride at being an essential part of Pittsburgh’s healthcare ecosystem.
However, nurses also said they felt spread thin — citing the success of nurses in the Allegheny Health Network/Highmark system’s Allegheny General and West Penn hospitals, Magee nurses and advanced practitioners called for fixed staffing ratios, parental leave, and better health insurance so as not to end up “in debt to our employer.”
“It takes time to build trust in pregnancy, in the appointments where people can get all of their questions answered. It takes time to let the process of labor unfold,” nurse midwife Melissa DeiCas told those assembled. “We want a real say in how care gets delivered instead of having the corporate healthcare folks set the direction for where we’re headed.”
“Here at Magee, we witness the entire circle of life as nurses,” intensive care unit nurse Paige Wingard said. “It is dehumanizing and heartbreaking to have to rush through or cut ourselves off from those moments because we have simply too many responsibilities to attend to.”
Joining the group were numerous elected officials and their staff members, including U.S. Rep. Summer Lee; Pa. Reps. Aerion Abney, Jess Benham, Dan Frankel, and Lindsay Powell; Allegheny County Councilor Bethany Hallam; Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey; and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato.
Innamorato said Pittsburgh was “damn proud” to be a “union town” and offered her office’s full support of Magee nurses’ pursuit of a free and fair union election. She said UPMC had a “moral obligation” to recognize the nurses’ vote. “A lot of our dollars, a lot of our taxpayer dollars, actually go to support UPMC’s work, and those resources should be going to patient care, not anti-union campaigns,” Innamorato added.
In the face of what they said were anti-union tactics by the regional healthcare giant, nurses struck a defiant chord. Speaking on behalf of “100,000 men and women of Allegheny County’s labor movement,” Allegheny/Fayette Central Labor Council President Darrin Kelly was blunt in demanding a fair and transparent union election and negotiations.
“We are calling for a free and fair election without any interference, which is the American right of everybody that’s behind me,” Kelly said, addressing UPMC’s executives in absentia. “We recognize UPMC’s rights, but I will tell you this, you can either see the light or you can feel the heat.”
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2025.
